Preparing students and families to thrive in the gene age

Success with Autism

Description:

Portia Iversen explains how her autistic son, who was nonverbal, learned to communicate. This method used to communicate has also been used by others.

Transcript:

I had an experience that changed my life so much that it caused me to write a book about it, my book 'Strange Son.' My own son who was nonverbal, we didn’t know if he had any language, he was considered very impacted by autism. Autism is a spectrum disorder, and he was considered really on the far end of severe and when he was nine years old he began to communicate for the first time. And this was such a startling experience, it was so wonderful, but also, for any logical mind, this is quite shocking. It made me realize that you can’t judge a book by its cover. Subsequent to his being able to communicate through typing, pointing at letters, I then saw a number of other children begin to do this, and I realized there could be a communication method for the so-called low functioning children who are nonverbal that I think could be as big a deal as brail or sign language.